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Collaborative Game Brainstorm
Now that you have a better idea of how some popular games are constructed, let's take a shot at coming up with some ourselves. You'll be in groups of 3 and each round will be 5 minutes long. There are some constraints for the game, but everything else is open for you to decide! Try to come up with as many of the fundamental game components (game state, player/avatars, mechanics, dynamics, goals, theme) we discussed as possible. The game design process involves a lot of testing and refining, so these ideas won't be polished and ready to play, but they will hopefully be ready for you to implement and playtest. If you're having trouble coming up with an idea in 5 minutes, try thinking about more outrageous and wild ideas and build off of your group's suggestions. (This is a tried and true method used by design firms like IDEO so have at it!)
- Completed as many arithmetic problems as possible in a minute. Answers are multiple choice and the point values for each problem increase as you get a streak.
- Find as many words as possible in 2 minutes in a grid of scrambled letters. You can move in all directions to highlight a word, and you get points based on the letter values. Bonus points for finding all the words in the theme.
- Someone kidnaps your pet and locks you in a room. You have 1 minute to find the 5 items in your room and escape otherwise the room explodes. The next room has more items, and finding a dinosaur or pogo stick has special powers
- Click a button as many times a possible to get points! Powerups and extra clickers cost clicks but increase your click rate.
Round 1 (dynamic): Your game must have a race to the end dynamic. Players start at point A, and the first to point B wins.
- Traps and trolls - reach the end of the maze with different routes. There are obstacles that send you back to the beginning, and people can collect items or "troll tools" which can make the other people blind, give them mirror image, or affect their gameplay. Once you reach the goal, scores are compared, which are composed of coins collected, and trolling others.
- Obstacle course on an island - theres a dinosaur chasing you to your boat. Pogo sticks make you go faster, traps speed you up. Collect coins to buy different maps and themes, different character appearances. Your score is the time it takes, best 2 out of 3 with another person.
- The Runs - You're in a part and you need to go to the bathroom with a time limit. Obstacles like groups of children, benches, fences. You can climb, jump, or shove people. Exertion limit will make you poo if you jump too much, and as time runs out, you start waddling slower.
- Generic driving game - be the last one to get to a point. push others to the front with portals and items.
Round 2 (mechanic): Your game must use items in some way. Players can walk and pick up items, but the amount, action, and value of the items is up to you.
- The right to bear arms - defeat a bear boss by collecting weapons. Collect raw materials, and use a 3x3 minecraft style grid to craft weapons. You can attack the bear;s HP and there are traps and dirty materials like bear poo, which do damage, along with the bear. TH avatar will be a handsome man named Hurshal!
- Destruction game - pick things up and destroy things. Ultimate goal is to destroy the world . You can build machines to create larger destruction, like a tank or a lumberyard or a giant flying death machine that makes strawberry ice cream made from the blood of the young.
- A class room and you're a student. When you start, you're a student who just got kicked out and you moved to a new school for stealing and throwing things. You can pick up chalk and chairs and whiteboard and hit your teacher. You can also steal things from your "Crush" and add it to your collection page. Each level has up to 3 stars and achievements. The teachers pet is the enemy which prevents you from doing things. There is also an actual teachers "pet", starting as a hamster that gets larger until its a dinosaur in the last level.
- You're a sketchy dude with a giant trench coat trying to see how much you can steal before getting caught. Steal milk, coffee, other food and use it to make you steal faster. The watchers like security, workers, and grandmas prevent you from stealing, but you can throw your items at them.
- You are a dinosaur minding your own business but theres an asteroid about to hit. Your goal is to hop on your pogo stick and get to a safe distance away from the crash site. Obstacles like other dinosaurs, a hole in the ground and eating too much slows you down. Powerups for your pogo stick which help you. If you're almost out of the range of the explosion you'll survive, but you also mutate, which may hurt or help you.
- You are a dinosaur on a pogo stick. You're an egg and when you hatch and when you see a pogo stick, you think it is meant for you. Cause havoc in the city, and eat people. Upgrade your pogo stick to do more. Other dinosaurs on pogo sticks can be smacked if needed. They all have different stats and skills.
- Ripoff of doodle jump - dinosaur on a pogo stick. Jump on bigger dinosaurs, and monkeys breathing fire and throwing bananas at you.
- You're a doctor that got eaten by a dinosaur trying to cure it. You jump around its body on a pogo stick to fix things. Air tank helps you move, and you can eat parts of the dinosaur so you don't starve, but you don't want to kill the dinosaur. Theres a timer after which the dinosaur dies.
- Fired by your boss. Slap your boss. If you slap too fast, he dies and you lose, and if you slap too slow he hits you and you die. Either way you lose.
- You're a giant titan human fighting giant dinosaurs on pogo sticks in waves. Each level gets harder, but its endless. Also boss levels and power ups with armor and colossal titans.
- Battle royale - Theres an armageddon and anarchy. Your character is random with 5 options. Each character has its own weapon, that you are stuck with, and you go around the city and kill as many people as possible. Move to larger arena to repeat. Unlock new characters and if you kill everyone, you die and then you lose.
- You're a taxi driver, and you want to survive as long as possible. Pick up people and drop them off. There's a time limit but you lose if you run people over or crash. There's also power boost and time boost power ups. Traffic and cops that chase you. If you have a president as a passenger, you get more money, robbers take your money, etc. There's day and night shifts with different traffic, cop, and pedestrian, and visibility conditions.
Round 5 (players/avatars): Your game must accommodate a large number (up to 20) people playing at once, connected through their phones.
- Hunger games theme - randomly placed into groups and you want to survive longer. By the time the game ends, you want as many people in your cam as possible. Depending on your camp, you have resources to consume like food. Post apocalyptic you find tools. If you encounter people with food, and you can challenge them and if you win ,they join your camp. You can send spies around and understand other camps. Goal is to collect as many people to your side before the time ends.
- Giant MMORPG, everyone in the same room is a part. There are other parties and you fight to get to the ultimate goal of getting a treasure. Defeat dungeons. Start in a different area from other parties, and you can fight them or join them. Fight bosses in a giant world, and you can find people in your part with a map. You can wander off from your party, but its team based so you would probably not survive if you were alone.
Round 6 (theme): Take an existing book, movie, story, etc and adapt it as a game. You can encompass the entire story in the game or focus on a particular portion of it.
- Game of thrones as a game - pick a house/kingdom. Try to take over the other kingdom and stay king. Real time strategy based.
- Wall-E - one day Eve came to each and Wall-E fell in love. Eve had a malfunction and she has to be sent back to the spaceship. Wall-E goes after her but goes through a lot of obstacles to sneak back onto to the ship without getting caught by the humans.
- Tome and Jerry themed- related to the episodes. Recreate the scenes by doing certain tasks like setting up the mouse trap and you can pick which character you want to be.
- Dodgeball - hold the phone and move it around to dodge balls. Use the camera to detect if the other person is on the side. The virtual world that shows the dodgeballs and you can pick them up and fling your phone to throw the object. There are also floating virtual helper items which give you power ups and hinder the opponents playing. if you got hit, you have to move to the back of the game and hurl dodgeballs at the players
- Mario party clone - have die and go around the board and play a turn. There's a random minigame at the end of each turn, and winning the minigame gives you an extra life. Passing over a person starts a duel with that person, and the loser loses a life. Goal is to survive on the board as long as possible.
- Everyone takes turns being asked a question about anything and if you get it correct, you get points. Points move you up the ladder to a new stage. As you progress through the stages, the questions get harder and you get more points. If you're 4 levels behind, you die and lose the game. Golden ticket moves you up 4 levels.
- Turn based tactical game. Huge grid map with squares that have units on them. You can move around and defeat units on each square. Each unit has their own stats, skills, levels and timings.
- Zoo escape game - You are a person or a giraffe trying to escape its cage. You play through a puzzle to pick a lock, and the next stage is sneaking past zookeepers.
- Giraffe simulator - play as a giraffe an do giraffe things like eat and lick your ears. Find a mate and make a giraffe family. When you die, you assume control of your child giraffe. There are also giraffe related minigames like whack a giraffe and giraffe races because they run funny.
- Hungry giraffe - you can't win. You're a hungry giraffe trying to eat all the leaves on a tree. If your stamina goes to 0, you die. If you eat all the leaves on a tree, your neck grows and you move to the next level. Items like tree berries and magical fruits change the gameplay.
- Build buildings based on animal shapes. Theres a limited number of materials that you use to construct the level. If your building stands for 5 seconds, you pass the level.
- Flappy bird controlled with accelerometer
- Temple run with accelerometer
- Charades/taboo with phone on head
- take pictures of something X! with a time limit. First player to get a picture wins.
- speaking into a phone to control it - "flip", "horizontal orientation", "shake the phone"
- guess what a silhouette of image is by speaking
- blow on the phone to direct bubbles around a maze
- loudest clap wins
- accelerometer controlled labyrinth
- blow the 3 little pigs house down
- blow a bubble up, and title to avoid obstacles
- crazy dog running faster and faster. tilt to control dog
- cooking mama on a phone. use accelerometer to shake, pour, mix, etc
- whack a mole - every time something appears on the screen, shake to hit it
- ddr with accelerometer
- light sensor to create a game using darkness
- hide in the dark the longest wins
- use google maps as a play area
- reach historical landmark with gps to get points
- bop it using accelerometer and microphone
- shake the phone to the rhythm of the music
- supermarket sweep - scan items in a grocery store. goal is to ring up largest bill in the time limit.
- bump phones with people also playing the bump phones game
- egg toss/balloon toss with phone. Most throws in time limit wins.
- multiplayer - spin around in circles, person who generates the largest acceleration wins
- multiplayer - throw phone from highest height to win
- simon says but with notes and singing/humming
- multiplayer - use camera to match a given expression. best facial expression wins
- multiplayer - record a video clip with you acting out/explaining/being funny to a given topic. clip with most votes wins
- multiplayer - most accurate impression or sound effect wins
- use accelerometer and microphone to simulate drumming on a flat surface
- follow phone instructions - yell song lyrics, walk north, lower the volume on the phone, etc
- hot or cold - use gps to find a particular location around you
- Scavenger Hunt Simulator
- a runner where you tilt to move - like Temple Run
- Side scroller
- Roulette
- bet with voices
- Phone shows a picture of a nearby location, player must somehow get to that location
- Phone game where players must perform various actions with their phone (ex. shake, yell at it, etc.) and the phone registers things such as volume, # of times shaken, etc.) Whoever has the highest score wins
- Phone game where you must be some distance away from other phones playing within the time limit (and hold for a couple seconds)
- Game where you met orient your phone in such a position whoever does so first (and holds the position for a couple seconds)
- Phone turns screen off and you must walk/jog (can be in place) for some # of steps. Whoever is closest wins.
- Phone baseball with motion controls
- Truth or Dare with Lie Detector
- Just dance with phones
- Dragon boat
- Earth Quick (mini world) - you shake it to destroy people)
- Find the Treasure - Random location within a mile: go out, run, and find it. Shorter time = bonus points.
- Mario with motion - Tilt your phone t move, shake upwards to jump, move down to get into tunnel, etc.)
- Alarm - must tilt to exact angle to stop the alarm or other things (shake 100 times)
- Jello characters attack you from top of screen, tilt to dodge. Gradually increases speed
- Receives sets of instruction to either blow, shake, tilt, or increase/decrease volume
- Use front camera to sense movements and dance
- Find your phone. - Wearing a device, you turn to face somewhere else. Your friend hides your phone. Based on how close you are from your phone, the device will either beep louder or softer.
- Lie Detector - Using the sensor to next to the camera, it can sense your heartbeat. Screen will show a set of questions and friends can ask person holding onto sensor. If they lie, their heart rate will go up and a buzzer noise will sound from the phone. If player lies, punishment wheel will spin and friends will do whatever is said on the punishment wheel
- Hot Potato with Phones
- Phone Football
Round 10 (mechanic): Your game must use math (arithmetic, algebra, geometry) as the basis for the gameplay
- tangrams - have levels to answer math problems with different categories. Each level gives you a shape that you can use to fill in the shape. As the game progresses, there are mystery pieces that you can add later
- Some guys on top of a building - place a ladder at a particular angle so he doesn't fall
- Take a bunch of parabolas and graphs and have a race on top of it/platformer
- Fill up 95% of a white canvas using a particular shape with no overlapping
- A figure on a clock. The clock moves and you have to jump to stay alive as the hands move.
- Ware game - 20 numbers and a number given on top. Use addition/multiplication to combine the numbers and get the goal number. if you clear all the numbers on the board in a certain time limit, you move to the next board with harder numbers.
- Candy crush with numbers. you want to add to a particular number using numbers 3 in a row, which clears the numbers.
Round 11 (user group, mechanic, theme): Your game must be dinosaur themed and use the camera in some way. This should be targeted at users 65 and up.
- Dino with friends? - you've won a dinosaur farm off a bet and you gamble to make money to feed your dinosaurs. The more money you make, the more you can upgrade your farm. You can sell off your dinosaurs to make money if you lose it all gambling. The camera is used for facial recognition so your dinosaurs will recognize you and see if you are happy. You can also video chat with fellow old gamblers.
- Dinosaur as a pet. The dinosaur starts as a baby and grows as you care for it. Camera for video chatting and connecting with your friends. Minigames and other activities with friends. Simple interface with big buttons.
- Virtual world with dinosaurs as currency. You take a picture and the camera identifies how old you are. You get younger as you level up. There's minigame where you catch dinosaur's falling teeth and if you take pictures of others you can make them your friends. You can also bake cookies and gamble. If your grandchildren play, they can live in your house and earn extra bonuses. Old people start out being really rich. Dinosaurs can be traded in for youth. If you don't log in for 4 days, you get older and sick.
- A town where there are shops that you can buy stuff to customize your pet dinosaur. You can feed your dinosaur, watch it grow, and go on walks with it. You can use the camera to take a picture of places you walk in and make that the background of the game when you walk the dinosaur. There are minigames where you can buy stuff
Round 12 (mechanics): Your game must involve drawing something on the screen and tactical maneuvering.
- Flow free - pick a level you want to play. The game is a maze that is shown for 3 seconds. The maze disappears and you have to draw the path. The lower time is better.
- Draw something - you are given a prompt or picture, and you have to draw it. In order to draw, you need to use the accelerometer to move the pencil around.
- Tron - you race other players and while you're racing, you leave behind a temporary trail which can cause others to crash. You can swipe or use buttons to control your car. Higher ranks unlock faster cars. The game is a sidescroller so the map moves with you. Each race has an objective (draw this, or have the longest trail)
- Racing with other people. You can draw obstacles or items to help you win the game. You have a library of things to draw and your drawings have to match that.
Round 13 (mechanics): Your game must use the accelerometer as the primary means of controlling the avatar
- move ball around maze and dodge axes. You use the phone as a steering wheel and view the maze top-down
- tilt screen to wash away dirty spots
- flight simulator
- ball rolling down hill with obstacles
- tightrope walking over a giant gap between cliffs
- pacman controlled with wrist motions
- use phone as ping pong paddle
- maze runner game with obstacles
- display tennis on large screen and use phone as tennis racket
- cooking game - use accelerometer to wash, chop, mix, and prepare food
- catch food with mouth
- reverse fruit ninja - avoid knives as a falling fruit
- virtual paddle ball
- tilt to reach destination in space, avoiding black holes, fans, and asteroids
- swing around like tarzan, timing movements to not fall
- walk/climb a mountain by choosing the easiest path
- tilt controlled frogger
- survive onslaught of projectiles by dodging and destroying
- find clothes in a messy closet
- make clothes from cloth and buttons
- "farm" clothes?
- fill out orders for customers who want particular clothes
- catch the falling clothes on laundry day. the more you have, the slower you get. dump the clothes in the washing machine to get points and speed up
- use clothes to help person with fever/cold reach optimal temperature
- retail rush on clothes - spend the most money
- guess the designer/style/fabric of clothes
- try different types of sewing stitches
- collect as many different kinds of clothes as you can
- dress a celebrity - choose a celeb and make your own clothes or buy clothes for them to wear
- find the fake/knockoff brand
- find clothes that have special powerups - invisibility, skinnier, fatter, taller, shorter
- dress up game
- buy and sell clothes to make money. with enough money, launch your own brand and expand as a fashion empire
- stain remover
- hang clothes on a wire/hanger
- learn how to say different kinds of clothes in different languages
- bejeweled but match shirt, pants, shoes to make a triplet
- grow sheep to harvest wool to make cotton to sew clothes and sell for money
- draw your own clothes with your own designs
- clothes store manager - manage and plan sales of clothes in the store
- run dry cleaning shop and buy new equipment
- play as emergency personnel (SFPD) and respond to various emergencies
- GTA SF
- skydiving from transamerica building
- dirty harry killer hunt
- bridge runner
- play as a robber in SF and buy new equipment
- play as an SF realtor
- take pictures of SF attractions
- race for shortest path from A to B
- try to get on muni - points if you don't pay and don't get kicked off
- play as an SF news reporter
- Assassin's creed SF
- make chocolate at Ghirardelli factory
- you dropped your keys down the drain and you have to go into the ocean to retrieve them
- play as a construction worker in SF
- trip to alcatraz
- play as a park ranger and clean up park, water plants, maintain trails, etc
- play as SF building hugger
- blow all of the fog away
- uber/lyft simulator
- protect the rainbow flag
- survive an earthquake in SF
- race through different venues in SF
- play as SF giants
- SFavenger hunt - find landmarks and iconic restaurants and bars
- SimCity SF
- BART driving simulator
- race friends through randomly generate route in SF
- build skyscrapers for new software engineers to gentrify
- downtown SF parkour
- chinatown restaurant manager
- squash the startup
- deal or no deal - chinatown edition
- cable car racer
- gay rights protester - stake out and protest for points
- muni strike simulator - achieve highest citywide anger level
- 49ers football simulator
- college student at SF state simulator
- fingerzilla - tap phone to destroy SF by earthquake
- hotel manager in SF
- Cooking Healthy - cooking game with healthy foods and recipes
- Guess which food is healthier
- Trivia Fight - last one to answer the question correctly = 10 push-ups
- Catch the cheater
- FDA crackdown
- Run with pictures
- How to eat Bananas - learn tactics to open bananas; banana coupons; banana recipes; proper way to eat bananas
- League of Legends Push-ups - 20 push-ups during loading screen or get disconnected
- Grocery Sim - check price and nutrition of food/item
- What if [insert bad thing here] ? - Show you consequences through game
- Tips for a healthy and honest relationship
- make juice
- brainstorming game - find a topic and it provides a timer and other useful tools.
- Organic farming
- recovering crack addict
- Raise baby, give it healthy foods, make it exercise, etc.
- promote positive attitude
- math arena
- brain exercise - help you exercise your brain on your phone; memory games, math, etc.
- Life cycle - choose the best options --> avoid bad decisions
- The more distance you run (in real life), the more resources you get
- Dating Sim - If you have bad habits you start to lose your partner
- Counting calories - if you stay in range recommended --> rewards
- An alarm that only turns off when you get out and run
- Pill Counter Game - Pharmacist uses the phone to scan prescriptions; guess what pills you need to take and it corrects you
- Imaginary Killer - Imaginary Killer chasing you; you are running
- Make healthy smoothies and salads
- Farmville with health checks
- Exercise log - keep track of how much you exercise; get off your laziness to go to the gym Changes depends on what you ate + exercise; too much Cal = fat; not enough Cal = Dies/side
- Self check-up - See if you have any of the chosen diseases: Herpes, gonorrhea, cold, flu, etc.; find symptoms of the sicknesses; learn to prevent; encourage others.
- butterfingers - try to pick up food covered in butter
- guess the calorie count for foods
- hunt for food on a deserted island to survive
- food ninja - swipe to cut foods and land in stomach
- eat cockroaches for points
- squirt juice at people
- serve as a chef in a restaurant
- get as many cups of ice cream as you can in 30 minutes
- food delivery game
- 2 food 1 word
- chew the food and throw in mouth
- farming?
- run your own bakery or diner
- make the grosses cafeteria food
- steal food
- decorate the cake according to orders
- catch the falling fruits
- make your own desserts and sell them
- make biggest weight gain in a month
- hunt for pizza during a zombie apocalypse
- guard your food and don't let other teams eat it
- build and run a hot dog factory
- put the food in the right food group
- pizza/bun/noodle eating contest
- fast food themed candy crush
- fruits vs vegetables - pick a side and fight eachother
- food war - use food and create recipes like the peashooter gun
- ice cream stack game
- make the healthiest meal given ingredients
- create pretty food dishes for a show
- feed the monster
- dress up your food
- steal food from refrigerator late at night
- stretch bubble gum as long as you can
- paint fruits
- food fight at school
- random food combiner
- snow eating game
- eat food in least amount of bites
- guess ingredients for recipe
- charlie and the chocolate factory - willy wonka disappears and you have to run the factory
- peel string cheese as thin as possible
- eat as much as you can at a buffet without exploding
- drive and freeway and try to eat without crashing
- build tallest structure using spaghetti sticks and marshmallows
- fight with fruits that have different effects
- racing game where fuel is made from food and has different effects
- cooking mama but use more of phone features
- eat all the fruit snacks but throw the orange ones at people
- try to rack up largest grocery bill
- make donuts from scratch
- peel a banana and make your own kingdom out of it
- save the mushroom kingdom by making pizza
- cereal killer - avoid being killed by cereal mascots
- try to cut food as fast as possible without cutting your fingers
- runner game where you collect bananas
- megajump with sushi and fruits, etc
- work as a restaurant manager
- cook for a baby and try to make her not cry
- be a food critic and rate different restaurants
- anagramaster - combine words to create anagrams
- word search with friends
- find the word with the most syllables from a list
- come up with 50 words from a category
- sudoku with letters
- one of these words is not like the others
- find hidden words in a picture
- puzzles & dragons but make words instead
- try to memorize the longest string of letters
- draw something dictionary edition
- pictionary
- hangman
- falling letters make words like tetris
- word search
- find synonyms of a word from a list
- insults with friends
- insta memogram
- cast a spell (hangman)
- word conductor - finish the word
- synonym dash
- find misspelt words
- shooting game where you aim at targets by spelling out their names
- guess the candy
- speed typing
- fill in the missing letter
- type words to control car
- guess what obscure words mean
- summarize a random short paragraph
- build buildings with letters
- 2049 with letters
- fighting game where you fight with big words
- word search creator
- fighting game where you have to type out a move's name to use it
- scrabble like game where bigger words give you better stats
- Cat Search: Where's Pusheen?
- Cat jumping on trees, avoiding firemen
- (angry) cat bath
- cat trying to chase little people (secret of Arietty story)
- Cat Dance: get the cat to move the right way
- Cat battling monsters
- Cat tower builder
- firefighter saves cat from the tree (save as many cats as you can in 1 min)
- cat + dog fight
- cat catching fish
- save the cat from the tall tree
- Cat 2048 (+1)
- 9 Lives - got through levels, survive as long as you can
- please the cats
- cat scratching yarn
- cat chasing laser
- cat drinking milk (drink as fast as possible)
- Quiz questions: what kind of cat are you?
- mouse trying to run away from a cat
- get your cat to take a bath
- Tom and Jerry game (+2)
- cat pet simulator
- cat in a maze
- cat being lazy
- cat chasing mouse
- Cat Runner: running as a cat to try and catch the mouse but also avoid the chasing dog
- fat cat adventures
- Catwoman vs. Batman
- Cat-simulator
- Cat RPG
- Cat tower defense
- Cat shelter work
- Cat belly rub
- Cat attacking dog
- Cat town
- Cat knowledge Quiz
- Cat running away from dog
- Bullying cats
- Grumpy Cat Plays Pokemon - HTML based MMO Pokemon - Character controlled by players' chat
- Cat food eating game - click to eat as fast as you can
- Pet a cat
- Kitty plays hide and seek.
- Cat City - with Catsco
- Pet the cat til it explodes
- Cat Trapper - a cat platformer where you hop around trying to catch the mouse
- Drug a cat
- Which Cat is Fatter
- Dogs vs. Cats
- Find the cat - it's hidden somewhere in the level
- Try to put the cat into the tub
- Alien Cat Invasion
- Cat explorer - go around the city finding cat treasures
- Taking care of a cat
- Create music with "meows"
- Cat mimicker - mimic a cat; different cat meows
- Cat safari (with lions/tigers)
- Catlateral damage
- Crazy Cat Lady Simulator
- Cat book - a game about cats using social media... and ruling the world
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